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Gene's guide to Surrender at 20 (aka Summoner's Rift)

Surrender at 20 is an alternative League of Legends gamemode, sometimes known as Summoner’s Rift, or Summoner’s bore. Despite being advertised as a player versus player type game mode, Surrender at 20 tends to emphasize player versus environment mechanics. In fact, a role exists on Surrender at 20 that revolves entirely around player versus environment interactions. This role know as “Jungler” will be covered later in the guide. Common gameplay involves killing npc characters by waiting for them to slowly die before getting the last hit. Many players often don’t notice the members of the opposing team in lane with them. It’s very common to see players hardly acknowledge one another for the majority of the game. Top and bottom players have heard of each other, but can neither confirm nor deny their existence.

Winning Surrender at 20 can often be compared to winning a coin toss. Many games are determined within the first few seconds of the loading screen after all of the character portraits have appeared. Players are then treated to a 20-50 minute cinematic in which they see their champions engage in one epic, and usually incredibly one sided team fight. Critics call the first 40 minute of the cinematic “predictable, hardly innovative and full of repetitive clichéd dialogue, rendering the last 10 minutes hardly worth the wait.” Eventually the losing team’s nexus blows up.

Seasoned Surrender at 20 players might begin to suspect that the game they’re watching themselves “play” is much like a new episode of Jersey Shore. Theoretically it’s “new”, but do you really need to watch the incredibly predictable series of events that will unfold for 40 minutes with the same small pool of characters you saw last time before reaching the obvious and unsatisfying conclusion? For this reason, expert players will try and get their team to reach a mutual agreement of stopping the cinematic after viewing it for 20 minutes. For some reason much like a porno, 40% of the viewers will always insist on watching the entire thing.

There are three different modes of Surrender at 20 that players can choose from. While there is some element of choice involved, in reality all three game modes are pretty much identical.

[1]Blind pick is possibly the truest form of a coin toss determining the winner. 99% of games are actually determined at the loading screen. The other 1% is because of power outages, hurricanes and thunder storms.

[2] Ranked mode allows players to fool themselves into believing that they are playing in a competitive environment. At the end of every round players are assigned a random arbitrary number that is often described as being “meaningless” and “a poor indicator of skill”. Apparently it’s better to have a higher number. The only noticeable trend for this number is that it has an inverse relationship with another number made visible at the champion loading screen known as “ping.” Usually the higher the ping, the lower the number representing elo and vice versa. Much like a federal election, money decides if you will be victorious. Having a huge pool of champions, a good computer, and endless rune pages requires unspeakable amounts of cash.

[3] Draft mode is for players who want to try out troll supports, and for premades who want to play every role except for support. In theory is gives players a more competitive game mode without the stress of ranked mode. In reality it is completely identical to ranked mode. Seriously. You’re even given an arbitrary number like in ranked mode. The only difference is that you need to go through a great deal of pain and malware infested addons before being able to see it.

There are five very distinct roles in Surrender at 20.

[1]AP carry is the first. It should be noted that most players only know how to play the role known as “AP carry”. Even then, an overwhelming majority of players perform this role poorly, often confusing getting large numbers of kills (which this role is known to get quite easily in the first place) with skill. What many of these players fail to realize is that they are in the safest lane, in which they’ll have the easiest time farming, and a level advantage just in case they found it too hard to kill other people in an even fight. If you suck at Surrender at 20 go mid. No one will know.

[2] Solo top is probably the least important role, and has little impact on how the actual game goes. It’s kind of like when you’re doing a group presentation, and you have that guy whose job it is to report your group’s conclusion. Yeah they’re doing something but really it’s just filler, and most people quickly forget that they even did anything.

[3]Jungler is the role picked in an effort to compensate for the fact that the team lost the coin toss. Typically played by masochists and people who didn’t want to be stuck supporting, these player are often blamed for the loss, as well as every other player’s bad choices.

[4] AD carry is theoretically important, but most games end before anyone really notices them. While other roles offer 4-5 possible choices, this role is impressive for having the least amount of viable options at any given moment. Usually 2-3 depending on what’s FOTM (R.I.P. Vayne and Caitlyn).

[5] Support is the least desired role. Ironically, from a mechanic point of view these champions are quite overpowered despite their lack of popularity. Many of these champions fall victim to having an AP alternative build that renders them nerfed into oblivion without fixing any of their inherent problems. Some expert Surrender at 20 players suspect that eventually, Karma will become viable and overpowered with how things are progressing for these poor champions.

If you want to learn more about Surrender at 20, you can discuss it on its two discussion boards. One is known as “Summoner’s Rift”, and the other one is incorrectly labelled as “General Discussion”.

Do not attempt to discuss, bring up, mention, or even hint at dominion on these forums. You will embarrass yourself and get moved faster than a bullet going through your head when you found out that Riot isn’t giving us a ranked dominion yet. Also Surrender at 20 players will call your game mode a joke. Twisted Treeline players will resent you, because that’s just what they do.

I hope you guys found this guide informative, and if there are any more questions feel free to ask!